Climate General: News and Research of What Climate Change Means For Our Collective Future

Basically what his thread is dedicated to. Instead of having multiple threads that don't get answered or replied to, or read, as much as others; I decided it would be a good idea to organize news about the topic here. So it doesn't crowd up threads, bump out other threads, and focus can be localized in one location.

Latest news, discovery, and discussion about how the climate will effect the future, potential revolution, class, Earth's many biomes and ecosystems, farming, melting ice sheets, etc etc; all will be discussed here. This might not mean you can't make your own threads, this is just for convenience sake so things don't get crowded, or topics don't go unread.

I think this would be an easier way to organize threads, and have a discussion about the topic without making multiple topics and discuss the topic at hand. I'm repeating myself, I think you get the idea.

Machine learning predicts new details of geothermal heat flux beneath the Greenland Ice SheetJanuary 11, 2018University of KansasSummary: A new article uses machine learning for the first time to craft an improved model for understanding geothermal heat flux – heat emanating from the Earth's interior – below the Greenland Ice Sheet.

A paper appearing in Geophysical Research Letters uses machine learning to craft an improved model for understanding geothermal heat flux – heat emanating from the Earth's interior – below the Greenland Ice Sheet. It's a research approach new to glaciology that could lead to more accurate predictions for ice-mass loss and global sea-level rise.

These images show geothermal heat flux predictions for Greenland. Direct GHF measurements from the coastal rock cores, inferences from ice cores, and additional Gaussian-fit GHF data around ice core sites are used as training samples. Predictions are shown for three different values. The white dashed region roughly shows the extent of elevated heat flux and a possible trajectory of Greenland's movement over the Icelandic plume.

Among the key findings:

Greenland has an anomalously high heat flux in a relatively large northern region spreading from the interior to the east and west.

Southern Greenland has relatively low geothermal heat flux, corresponding with the extent of the North Atlantic Craton, a stable portion of one of the oldest extant continental crusts on the planet. The research model predicts slightly elevated heat flux upstream of several fast-flowing glaciers in Greenland, including Jakobshavn Isbræ in the central-west, the fastest moving glacier on Earth.

"Heat that comes up from the interior of the Earth contributes to the amount of melt on the bottom of the ice sheet – so it's extremely important to understand the pattern of that heat and how it's distributed at the bottom of the ice sheet," said Soroush Rezvanbehbahani, a doctoral student in geology at the University of Kansas who spearheaded the research. "When we walk on a slope that's wet, we're more likely to slip. It's the same idea with ice – when it isn't frozen, it's more likely to slide into the ocean. But we don't have an easy way to measure geothermal heat flux except for extremely expensive field campaigns that drill through the ice sheet. Instead of expensive field surveys, we try to do this through statistical methods."

Rezvanbehbahani and his colleagues have adopted machine learning – a type of artificial intelligence using statistical techniques and computer algorithms – to predict heat flux values that would be daunting to obtain in the same detail via conventional ice cores.

Using all available geologic, tectonic and geothermal heat flux data for Greenland – along with geothermal heat flux data from around the globe – the team deployed a machine learning approach that predicts geothermal heat flux values under the ice sheet throughout Greenland based on 22 geologic variables such as bedrock topography, crustal thickness, magnetic anomalies, rock types and proximity to features like trenches, ridges, young rifts, volcanoes and hot spots.

"We have a lot of data points from around the Earth – we know in certain parts of the world the crust is a certain thickness, composed of a specific kind of rock and located a known distance from a volcano – and we take those relationships and apply them to what we know about Greenland," said co-author Leigh Stearns, associate professor of geology at KU.

The researchers said their new predictive model is a "definite improvement" over current models of geothermal heat flux that don't incorporate as many variables. Indeed, many numerical ice sheet models of Greenland assume that a uniform value of geothermal heat flux exists everywhere across Greenland.

In addition to Rezvanbehbahani and Stearns, the research team behind the new paper includes KU's J. Doug Walker and C.J. van der Veen, as well as Amir Kadivar of McGill University. Rezvanbehbahani and Stearns also are affiliated with the Center for the Remote Sensing of Ice Sheets, headquartered at KU.

The authors found the five most important geologic features in predicting geothermal flux values are topography, distance to young rifts, distance to trench, depth of lithosphere-asthenosphere boundary (layers of the Earth's mantle) and depth to Mohorovičić discontinuity (the boundary between the crust and the mantle in the Earth). The researchers said their geothermal heat flux map of Greenland is expected to be within about 15 percent of true values.

"The most interesting finding is the sharp contrast between the south and the north of Greenland," said Rezvanbehbahani. "We had little information in the south, but we had three or four more cores in the northern part of the ice sheet. Based on the southern core we thought this was a localized low heat-flux region – but our model shows that a much larger part of the southern ice sheet has low heat flux. By contrast, in the northern regions, we found large areas with high geothermal heat flux. This isn't as surprising because we have one ice core with a very high reading. But the spatial pattern and how the heat flux is distributed, that a was a new finding. That's not just one northern location with high heat flux, but a wide region."

"We give the slight disclaimer that this is just another model – it's our best statistical model – but we have not reproduced reality," said Stearns. "In Earth science and glaciology, we're seeing an explosion of publicly available data. Machine learning technology that synthesizes this data and helps us learn from the whole range of data sensors is becoming increasingly important. It's exciting to be at the forefront."

Date: January 4, 2018Source: ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef StudiesSummary: For the first time, an international team of researchers has measured the escalating rate of coral bleaching at locations throughout the tropics over the past four decades. The study documents a dramatic shortening of the gap between pairs of bleaching events, threatening the future existence of these iconic ecosystems and the livelihoods of many millions of people. These ecosystems are facing a mass extinction, the likes of which have not been seen in prehistoric record for millions of years.

"The time between bleaching events at each location has diminished five-fold in the past 3-4 decades, from once every 25-30 years in the early 1980s to an average of just once every six years since 2010," says lead author Prof Terry Hughes, Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies (Coral CoE). This will only increase, soon it will be a massive bleaching half, every three years, after that, a year. Not long after mere months, and at that point the extinction of marine life in the habitat's reefs provide will be virtually extinct in the wild.

"Before the 1980s, mass bleaching of corals was unheard of, even during strong El Niño conditions, but now repeated bouts of regional-scale bleaching and mass mortality of corals has become the new normal around the world as temperatures continue to rise."

The study establishes a transition from a period before the 1980s when bleaching only occurred locally, to an intermediate stage in the 1980s and 1990s when mass bleaching was first recorded during warmer than average El Niño conditions, and finally to the current era when climate-driven bleaching is now occurring throughout ENSO cycles.

The researchers show that tropical sea temperatures are warmer today during cooler than average La Niña conditions than they were 40 years ago during El Niño periods.

"Coral bleaching is a stress response caused by exposure of coral reefs to elevated ocean temperatures, as well as differences in pH, and chemical imbalance. When bleaching is severe enough and prolonged, it leads to mass death of coral reefs. Reefs are very much the forests of the ocean, imagine entire forests dying with no hope of coming back, and then, try imagining the local ecosystem recovering from such a catastrophic event. It takes at least a decade to replace even the fastest-growing species," explained co-author Prof Andrew Baird of Coral CoE.

"Reefs have entered a distinctive human-dominated era – the Anthropocene," said co-author, Dr C. Mark Eakin of the National Oceanic & Atmospheric Administration, USA. "The climate has warmed rapidly in the past 50 years, first making El Niños dangerous for corals, and now we're seeing the emergence of bleaching in every hot summer." For example, the Great Barrier Reef has now bleached four times since 1998, including for the first time during back-to-back events in 2016 and 2017, causing unprecedented damage. Yet the Australia government continues to support fossil fuels, with no end in sight.

It may be within only the next two decades that the Great Barrier Reef will die altogether, becoming a grey husk, ornamented by skeletons of its former inhabitants, and dusted by sediment and organisms with no new natural predators reproducing rapidly; organisms like algae.

"We hope our stark results will help spur on the stronger action needed to reduce greenhouse gases in Australia, the United States and elsewhere," says Prof Hughes.

Rising CO2 is causing trouble in freshwaters globally, more parallel to the world's oceans than previously thought

Date: January 11, 2018Source: Cell Press

Summary: As carbon dioxide (CO2) levels in the atmosphere rise, more CO2 gets absorbed into seawater. As a result, the world's oceans have grown more acidic over time, causing a wide range of well-documented problems for oceanic life and ecosystems. Now, researchers present some of the first evidence that similar catastrophe are happening in global freshwaters, more than it was previously expected.

Example PicturedPredator induced defenses in Daphnia longicephala (top row, credit: Linda Weiss) and Daphnia pulex (bottom row, credit: Sina Becker). Left shows an undefended morphotype, right shows the defended morphotype. Insert shows magnification of expressed neckteeth. These morphological features render Daphnia less susceptible to predators. When the expression of these defensive traits is hampered by high levels of pCO2, Daphnia is suspected to fall as prey more easily. This isn't isolated, freshwater animals across the globe are beginning to show signs of fragility in response to increasingly acidic waters.

The study found that freshwater ecosystems have become more acidic with rising pCO2 (partial pressure of CO2). They also show in lab studies that increases in freshwater pCO2 can have detrimental effects on at least one confirmed (so far since publishing) keystone species, a tiny freshwater crustacean; leaving them less able to sense and defend themselves against predators.The findings suggest that increasing CO2 levels may be having widespread effects on freshwater ecosystems, and we've been ignoring it, assuming wrongly damage would effect Earth's oceans more. It seems, that it effects all aquatic ecosystems in a similar way to how the oceans are currently reeling.

"Ocean acidification and chemical imbalance, is often called the 'climate change's equally evil twin,' and many current investigations describe tremendous effects of rising CO2 levels on marine ecosystems," says Linda Weiss at Ruhr-University Bochum in Germany. "However, freshwater ecosystems have been largely overlooked. Our data indicate another pCO2 problem: pCO2-dependent freshwater acidification. In fact, many locations across the Earth, freshwater biomes are doing even worse than oceanic biomes. Our assumptions could have accidentally overlooked the extinction of a large amount of documented freshwater life globally."

Studies on ocean acidification have shown that there are consequences for marine food webs, nutrient cycles, overall productivity, and biodiversity. Yet, the researchers say, surprisingly little has been known about the impact of rising atmospheric CO2 on freshwater systems. While scientists expected that there had been increased pCO2 in freshwater bodies, the data were lacking. We're not beginning to get a glimpse of the effects.

To investigate, Weiss and colleagues first looked to eighty freshwater reservoirs in Germany. Their analysis of data over 35 years, from 1981 to 2015, confirmed a continuous pCO2 increase. As in the ocean, that increase has been associated with a decrease in pH (increasing acidity).

In fact, they report a change in pH of about 0.3 within 35 years, suggesting that freshwaters may acidify at a faster rate than the oceans. An unexpected result that could mean disregard of life gone extinct under our nose.

But just what effect was increasing pCO2 having on freshwater organisms? To begin to explore that question, the researchers focused their attention on small, freshwater crustaceans called Daphnia, also known as water fleas. Daphnia are a dominant species in many lakes, ponds, and reservoirs, and they are important as a primary food source for many larger animals.If they were to vanish, many freshwater fauna in the area would rapidly decline.

When Daphnia sense that predators are around, they respond by producing helmets and spikes that make them harder to eat. Weiss' team found in the lab that rising pCO2 levels get in the way of the water fleas' ability to produce those protective features. Leading to population loss that effected the overall ecosystem's populations, from Daphnia, up.

"High levels of CO2 reduce the Daphnia's ability to detect their predator," Weiss says. "This reduces the expression of morphological defenses, rendering them more vulnerable." She adds that such effects on Daphnia may have broader effects on freshwater communities. This is only an example, one cannot say for certain these results reflect all freshwater ecosystems, but there is little evidence to suggest that the acidification wouldn't effect other ecosystems as well; as in marine life.

Weiss says they were fortunate to obtain such a long data series on four freshwater reservoirs. It will now be important to gather more data representing freshwater ecosystems around the world

"We now want to know the global degree of this phenomenon, and just how much we've ignored" Weiss says.

I don't thing it matters much for our collective future. All that CO2 and energy emissions are something that were in the Atmosphere to begin with, in prehistoric eras. Of course, it will drastically change the climate, and will render some areas unsustainable and others flourishing. But it won't render global environment hostile to humans.

On a related note: I'm generally opposed to terrorism since it's a shit tactic, but it's high time somebody started compiling a little list of professional climate change denier media personnel and scientists who received some "compensation" for their edgy take on it, CEOs and major shareholders of fossil fuel companies and car manufacturers that lie about their emissions, etc. These fucks are literally building up for genocide that will take effect in the near future and people globally recognize this.

Having a TOP 50 would be an easily reachable target for an imageboard like ours. Please reply to this post if you can add a name and provide a short explanation for the person's activities.

Climate Change Spurs Global River Flooding, That Will Only Increase Yearly

Date: January 10, 2018Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK)Summary: Rainfall changes caused by global warming will increase river flood risks across the globe. Already today, fluvial floods are among the most common and devastating natural disasters. Scientists have now calculated the required increase in flood protection until the 2040s worldwide, breaking it down to single regions and cities. They find that the need for adaptation is greatest in the US, parts of India and Africa, Indonesia, and in Central Europe including Germany. Inaction would expose many millions of people to severe flooding. Perhaps killing thousands in single floods.

"More than half of the United States must at least double their protection level within the next two decades if they want to avoid a dramatic increase in fatal river flood risks," says lead-author Sven Willner from the Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research (PIK). Without additional adaptation measures – such as enhancing dykes, improved river management, increasing building standards, or relocating settlements – the number of people affected by the worst 10 percent of all river flooding events will increase in many places: In Northern America from 0.1 to 1 million – while this seems not like a large number, it is a tenfold increase. In Germany it could rise sevenfold, from 0.1 to 0.7 million.

Absolute values are even bigger elsewhere: in South America the number of people affected by flooding risks will likely increase from 6 to 12 million, in Africa from 25 to 34 million, and in Asia from 70 to 156 million. The real numbers might be even higher in the future as population growth and further urbanisation is not taken into account. The death tolls in the coming decades for these regions, will be unimaginable

The study is based on comprehensive computer simulations using existing data on rivers from a great number of sources. "While this data is not perfect for each and every river in the remotest corners of our planet, it certainly is sufficient for places where a lot of people live, a lot of financial values are accumulated, and where flood risks are substantial – we know enough about the places that matter," explains Willner. Data on changes in rainfall, evaporation and the like are from the worldwide largest modelling intercomparison project of climate impacts (ISIMIP), coordinated by Katja Frieler at PIK. The spatial detail of the new study is roughly ten times more precise than in commonly used climate computer simulations.

"We have been surprised to find that even in developed countries with good infrastructure the need for adaptation is big," says co-author Anders Levermann, head of global adaptation research at PIK and a researcher at Columbia University's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory in New York. "Our yardstick is that people want to keep the protection level they have today – they don't want things to become worse. Consequently, in countries with a fairly good level of protection, much has to be done to keep the same level of protection and prevent that people indeed have to leave their homes due to flooding."

An increase in river flood risks over the next 2-3 decades will be driven by the amount of greenhouse-gases already emitted into the atmosphere, hence it does not depend on whether or not we limit global warming. "However, it is clear that without limiting human-caused warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius, river flood risks in our century will increase in many regions to a level that we cannot adapt to," says Levermann. "To keep people safe climate-change-induced risks must be taken seriously and money must be spent for adaptation. If we act now, we can protect against the risks of the next two decades. But further climate change must be limited by cutting greenhouse gas emissions from fossil fuels to avoid risks that surpass our abilities to adapt."

"The findings should be a warning to decision-makers," adds Levermann. "If they choose to ignore the issue, sadly enough disaster will come. The time has come where mitigating future climate change must be accompanied by adapting to the climate change that we already caused. Doing nothing will be dangerous."

It would be unethical for all parties involved. But especially the child yeah.

There are literally no perks I can think of, for ever having kids. That sounds like more of a fucking nightmare than dealing with this bullshit alone, because you know you can't really be the best parent you can be in a future like this.

Date: January 4, 2018Source: University of California - San DiegoSummary: In the past 50 years, the amount of water in the open ocean with zero oxygen has gone up more than fourfold. In coastal water bodies, including estuaries and seas, low-oxygen sites have increased more than tenfold since 1950. Scientists expect oxygen to continue dropping even outside these zones as Earth warms. Low oxygen caused the death of these corals and others in Bocas del Toro, Panama. The dead crabs pictured also succumbed to the loss of dissolved oxygen, or, ocean hypoxia. Much of these events that cause massive death of marine flora and fauna are due to the out of control spread of "red tides", algae that consumes all oxygen in an area turning the water in it's grasp blood red with itself.

In order to halt the decline of this massive hypoxia outbreak in our oceans, the world needs to rein in both climate change and nutrient pollution, an international team of scientists including Lisa Levin, a biological oceanographer at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California San Diego, asserted in a new paper published Jan. 4 in Science.

"Oxygen is fundamental to near universally all life in the oceans," said Denise Breitburg, lead author and marine ecologist with the Smithsonian Environmental Research Center. "The decline in ocean oxygen ranks among the most serious effects of human activities on the Earth's environment, that don't come without severe consequences. We will suffer too."

"Approximately half of the oxygen on Earth comes from the ocean," said Vladimir Ryabinin, executive secretary of the International Oceanographic Commission that formed the GO2NE group. "However, combined effects of nutrient loading and climate change are greatly increasing the number and size of 'dead zones' in the open ocean and coastal waters, where oxygen is too low to support most marine life."

In areas traditionally called "dead zones," like those in Chesapeake Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, oxygen plummets to levels so low many animals suffocate and die. As fish avoid these zones, their habitats shrink and they become more vulnerable to predators or fishing. But the problem goes far beyond "dead zones," the authors point out. Even smaller oxygen declines can stunt growth in animals, hinder reproduction and lead to disease or even death. It also can trigger the release of dangerous chemicals such as nitrous oxide, a greenhouse gas up to 300 times more powerful than carbon dioxide, and toxic hydrogen sulfide. While some animals can thrive in dead zones, overall biodiversity falls.

Climate change is the key culprit in the open ocean. Warming surface waters make it harder for oxygen to reach the ocean interior. Furthermore, as the ocean as a whole gets warmer, it holds less oxygen. In coastal waters, excess nutrient pollution from land creates algal blooms, which drain oxygen as they die and decompose. In an unfortunate twist, animals also need more oxygen in warmer waters, even as it is disappearing.

"This is a problem we can solve," Breitburg said. "Halting climate change requires a global effort, but even local actions can help with nutrient-driven oxygen decline." As proof Breitburg points to the ongoing recovery of Chesapeake Bay, where nitrogen pollution has dropped 24 percent since its peak thanks to better sewage treatment, better farming practices and successful laws like the Clean Air Act. While some low-oxygen zones persist, the area of the Chesapeake with zero oxygen has almost disappeared. "Tackling climate change may seem more daunting," she added, "but doing it is critical for stemming the decline of oxygen in our oceans, and for nearly every aspect of life on our planet."

You may read this and believe, just why should I care about the fish in the sea, or the squid, or the whales, the crabs, or the urchins? It's because, far more than anything on land, the ocean is the lifeblood of all life on Earth. If it continues to die, so will we all.

Source: Materials provided by University of California - San Diego. Note: Content may be edited for style and length.Denise Breitburg et al. Declining oxygen in the global ocean and coastal waters. Science, 2018 science.sciencemag.org/content/359/6371/eaam7240

One is the conflicts that will inevitably result from the consequences of global warming due to bad governance. What the fuck kind of response do you think the Indian government is going to have to millions of migrants fleeing coastal cities with absolutely no personal belongings? How about Mexico? This is going to happen in countries that aren't ready for the kind of instability it will bring. The picture isn't going to be pretty. It means wars, ethnic cleansing, collapse of civil structures, etc. This isn't even taking into account the global financial implications of climate change, or resource shortage.

The second problem is that climate change does have massive fucking implications. See . Fishing accounts for a huge amount of global food supply. If the oceans are compromised, we won't be able to easily fill that gap.

Stop swallowing liberal propaganda. Climate change isn't a footnote that we can innovate our way out of with a little can-do attitude. Its a disastrous phenomenon which requires unprecedented global cooperation and planning, none of which is even being seriously attempted.

What the fuck can we do at this point. For the next decade, if I'm being generous, we are somewhat fucked. And this whole thing is working like a clock from hell, it's treating this like a college student on too much adderall. By the time we get there, wherever we hope that may be, catastrophic damage will already be done.

I mean I don't want to be Gloom/Doom but it is just kinda fucked that way. It's a railroad in everyone's backyard.

was replying to a /pol/yp from the deleted drumph thread so I guess I'll leave it here. this is the laziest fucking cop-out of all.

2353590China and India are the biggest polluters on the planet And they happen to have 4 times the US population each. Also Russia is much more enviromentally dangerous (per capita) than any of the three, and is the 4th biggest.America could go 100% renewable and it still wouldn't stop climate change.Nothing could stop climate change, cutting it by a third or at least a fifth would have a pretty major impact, especially considering it's a feedback loop and all.Not to mention that it's much easier to organise boycotts against pollutant industry abroad when you have green industry at home.no intention of stoppingNo one has any intention of stopping, and no policy maker has ever told anyone to stop. China is investing massively in green energy and most of the solar panels americans use are manufactured in china with chinese technology.<environmental policymuh plastic polluted beaches and riversfuck ocean acidification thoughend yourself

Oh cool, so you're not old enough to have kids responsibly, speaking down upon adults who cannot financially have kids, it's nearly impossible to raise a family without it ending on a sad note, with enormous amounts of debt for both you and your child, in a nation with terrible health care and safety standardsThe future's prospects are extremely grim and just like before the boomers, people are being more conservative about having children

Maybe it's the opposite where like, you don't care about the safety and outcome of children because you just want kids to happen or else WE'LL GO EXXXTTTTINCT

How fucking awful is capitalism that it can make the 3.5 bilion years of evolutionary pressure to reproduce seem insignificant. 3.5 billion years of countless ancestors all reproducing and capitalism is the nail in the coffin to make a significant proportion of the population deny the most primal fundamental instinct of all life.

Date: January 11, 2018Source: University of HelsinkiSummary: A new study shows that birds have shifted the time of their breeding much faster (due to temperature change) than the farmers are anticipating their sowing times in Finnish farmland (and perhaps elsewhere unnoticed). This means that more birds are laying their eggs on fields that are still to be sown or in other unusual areas, a mismatch in timing that is most likely fatal for the bird nests. This could lead, in various areas of the world, birds to become confused and change their behavior in ways that threaten their populations, this is particularly critical to endangered bird populations, and research should be followed up into such possibilities.

"As the eggs of curlew and lapwings are placed on unsown fields, they are likely to be run over by farming machinery during sowing operations even if farmers were willing to avoid nest destructions," says researcher Andrea Santangeli from Finnish Museum of Natural History, which is part of University of Helsinki.

The rush to produce more food to feed an ever increasing and demanding human society led to unprecedented transformations in farmland over the past 50 years. The challenge of increasing crop yields was met by making extensive use of chemicals, like pesticides and herbicides to remove pests and weeds, and by making fields larger and homogeneous.

At the same time, agricultural practices have been mechanized, so that machines would allow managing large areas very efficiently. These changes, while increasing food production, have been catastrophic for the diversity of wildlife species living in farmland, such as birds. Bird species, such as the lapwing and the curlew that lay their eggs on the ground of arable fields have paid the highest costs of the recent changes in farming practices.

The long-term ringing data of breeding curlew and lapwings since 1970s suggest that as a result of shifts in timing of breeding, the incoming mechanical sowing destroys most of the nests that are laid on arable land.

The whole field of linking responses of humans and wildlife to climate change has been so far largely understudied. The study is among the first ones to investigate changes in the timing of land management in relation to changes in the timing of key life-stages of wildlife, but the observed pattern is unlikely unique.

"We believe the types of outcomes uncovered in the Finnish context may be common also in other systems," tells Santangeli.

As the authors uncovered a potentially very important conservation issue for the target group of species, they also recommended solutions in the paper to be published in Biological Conservation. As part of the solution, the authors suggest the wider promotion of effective schemes, such as the Agri-environment schemes, that are part of the European Union strategy for helping biodiversity in farmland.

Green radicals are ready to kill for their causeResearchers of domestic extremism in the U.S. say that the next wave of terrorism will be from radical greens.

Marc Morano: I think, what’s happening now, to make this more relevant, is, first of all, they see the success of groups like ISIS and how one individual who may not even be organised with a larger group, one individual act can cause chaos and draw attention to a cause. So specifically what’s happening right now is the climate change issue. Many environmentalists and mainstream environmentalists are terrified and think that the planet is going to be doomed. And the rhetoric coming from even the top leaders at the United Nations, top scientists who used to be affiliated with NASA are in a way giving potential eco-terrorists the justification to do it. They are saying that essentially we are doomed, that the civilization is at an end and we must stop this.The attitude of many activists looking at the climate scare is that we must act alone because governments are not acting or are not acting enough or in many cases just acting to defy their concerns. So, I do think that the environmental movement is going to be using the climate campaign or the climate scare, if you will, to justify more extreme in the next 5-10 years. rt.com/shows/sophieco/415907-violence-protests-usa-terrorism/

No kidding, except the Angels are just the byproducts of two centuries of unchecked industrialization.

I expect some people in this thread have watched at least some material from Dr. Guy McPherson, and while I wouldn't recommend him as a pinnacle-source of climate change knowledge or predictions I would highly recommend watching at least one segment from his typical lecture where he covers how the IPCC arrives at its predictions and models and what it omits to arrive at that conclusion. If anyone has a good link to that I'd appreciate it - I can't pull it up super easily right now being at work. But yeah, the link I'm posting has 5C of change by the end of the century, and even that may be optimistic.

Lets not have children because porky makes it hard, but porky can have all the kids they want, and just ignore all the people in the third world with far worse lives having a children.Fucking get tough raise your children to be strong tough fighters and one day they just might throw porky off his throne. Not having children is actually a incredibly greedy thing you can do since the more people we have the more easier Socialism will be able to get into power and will be better to fight off cappie countries.

Children are apart of climate change and future human population growth will effect this vastly,. Porky throws media and Capitalism at the lower classes to stop them having children since these future children threaten their position. This also allows them to import immigrants who have not partaken in the benefits we receive so they can be used and abused as cheap labor and moved around like cattle living in the most horrible of conditions. Hence why family benefits have been getting smaller and smaller every year and the media has been pressuring the poor to not have children.

Having and raising a child is one of the most enjoyable and fulfilling things one can do in life and to simply pass this off cause muh taxes without thinking of the greater society and the need for future socialist children is incredibly greedy and self-centered and your giving into the ruling classes who want to keep us down.

Just one of these porkies for instance is Gina Reinhardt an Australian incredibly rich and privileged billionaire has openly called for the forced sterilization of the poor. Protecting the environment is incredibly important but the Socialist cause is just if not more important since only Socialists will protect the environment in the first place since capitlists are well known for trashing it, so refusing to have children because muh taxes or muh power consumption is greedy and utopian thinking since fascists and stupid conservatives have children where as liberals and other such people on the "left" have little children and pet cats.

Dude have you not been paying attention? Industrial civilization at-scale is swelling up like a tumor. When it pops, which is inevitable and will likely happen this century, the mass-death and chaos that unfolds will be far worse than any event in our collective history.

Sparing a child from having to live through the death rattle of modern society is not selfish, it is merciful.

You sound like a psychopath when that user's concerns are basically that their kids might suffer and die in a climate apocalypse. The response is "we need soldiers to die for communism!"? Maybe we are all willing to die for something, but how are you emotionally capable of deciding to create people that you raise as a parent, the person a child is going to trust and turn to for protection and guidance in the world, for their utility as a pawn in a fight against capitalism?

Besides, other people continue to have kids, mostly people in poverty. You can just as easily continue attempting to get a hundred families onto your side rather than raise a foot soldier or two yourself and tell them the fate of the world is resting on their shoulders in the middle of a global upheaval made by the centuries long excesses of a global industrial machine.

Tea bags, plastic bags, fishing nets, and diapers are among the billions of pieces of plastic suffocating the fish and coral reefs in the Asia-Pacific region, new research reveals. According to the study, researchers found that 89 percent of over 124,000 reef-building corals showed signs of disease due to the amount of ingested plastic. Of the plastic-free reefs, which were few and far between, only 4 percent were infected with other diseases.

Here's some papers if anyone wants them. Easy, short reads. Something to take away is that as the climate changes, some species won't just die, they will travel outside their native areas and wreak havoc on other ecosystems. It also means that species that do well in warm environments will spread, like mosquitoes and cockroaches.

My dude, what did you think enlightenment would feel like? It isn't a cozy Kumbaya one with the universe feeling - it's having everything you thought you knew scribbled out under the weight of a new found truth. It's realizing that your previous hopes and dreams were built on a fiction, an incorrect assessment of reality. It doesn't feel good, it feels real.

What you do now that you have a more accurate understanding of the world you live in is up to you. The meaning and value of life has always been in the eye of the beholder.

The only advise I can impart is this - a lot more people are realizing how fucked we are and a lot more will be coming to the same conclusion as things drag on and get worse. A lot of those people will be suffering trying to come to grips with this new understanding of reality that flies so contrary to everything they were taught and everything they thought they knew and everything they had hoped for. If you can, be there for those people and you may be able to help each other find new way of living.

The worst tanker oil spill in decades is unfolding in the East China Sea

The worst tanker oil spill in decades is unfolding across hundreds of miles of the East China Sea after an Iranian oil tanker carrying more than 100,000 tonnes of toxic oil collided with a freighter and exploded, killing all 32 crew onboard. The ship burned, spewing its cargo, for more than a week before sinking in the waters between China, Japan and South Korea.reuters.com/article/us-china-shipping-spill/how-sanchis-spill-could-spread-idUSKBN1FF1AK

More than 11 billion items of plastic were found on a third of coral reefs surveyed in the Asia-Pacific region. This figure is predicted to increase to more than 15 billion by 2025. Plastic raises by 20-fold the risk of disease outbreaks on coral reefs, according to research. Plastic bags, bottles and rice sacks were among the items found.bbc.com/news/science-environment-42821004

Don't worry, the environment doesn't have to become directly hostile by way of either unbreathable air or the polar caps melting and drowning us. When the biosphere crumbles, you will simply starve to death.

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